UK Coming Home - The Middle East

[Cows getting bigger]

I was perusing a few old threads last night and started wondering about the whole 'Middle East Experiment'. From CGB's perspective, the affair commenced in Autumn 1990 when he was a young fg off. We trotted-off to Saudi and in early 1991 had a bit of an exciting skirmish with Saddam's bunch.

Not many people will remember, but the UK (notably the RAF) then spent the vast majority of the next 10+ years patrolling no fly zones well inside Iraqi airspace, occasionally dropping bombs and often wondering about whether the next illumination would be accompanied by a missile. Personally, a bit of variety was added with another Balkans Intervention (Kosovo) and some Northern Watch Turkish Delight but all the time the attraction of The Sandpit was overwhelming.

9/11 came and went and CGB (now a more conservative married sqn ldr) bimbled off to Afghanistan bu&&ering around in more-or-less the same kit we slagged-off ten years previously whilst others were getting ready for "Saddam Hussein, The Rematch". So, we finally sorted out Iraq and are told we have done the same in Afghanistan - it is time to come home.

Maths was never my strong point but I think we have been continuous dabbling in the Middle East for about a quarter of a century (this time round). Certainly, barring a couple of years of Cold War Inner German Border beer drinking, the entirety of CGB's military career has revolved around oil infested sand and I only wish the RAF AT fleet had a loyalty card/air miles scheme.

Having now left the military CGB is sat wondering whether the 680 or so UK military deaths, together with a number of injuries probably near 10 times that amount has been worth it? Is Iraq stable? How long before Afghanistan will spiral into civil war?

Can we honestly walk away and say that things are better than they were 25 years ago?

[Saintsman]

Mr Bliar would think so.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

To answer the questions first; Iraq is unstable and doomed. It no longer exists as a country, de facto, and the change is irrevocable. The 'stan? 2 years tops.

Gulf War? - arguably worth it.
Kosovo - arguably worth it
Everything since? No, not worth it right from the get-go, and a large number of very intelligent people said so at the time. Geopolitically, economically, you name it.
Where is that Kajaki Dam turbine? Still in its f#cking box, rusting away, providing power to nobody.

Unless your name is GWB, Paul Wolfowitz et al, in which case you carry on kidding yourself you are a master strategist and it's everyone who followed's fault for not maintaining the 'vision'.

No-one with a brain blames you and your mates CGB; you were still ready if the Rooskies/Chinks came over the hill. And if "soldiers" start getting their own ideas about politics; well, we might as well go live in Burma.

However, it was deeply wrong right from 9/11 onwards.

[500N]

Fox3

Everything since? No, not worth it right from the get-go,

Wasn't the initial invasion of Afghanistan and kicking out the Taliban worth it ?

Except as everyone said, they should have got out right after that.

Just asking.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

No, I don't think so.
All we needed to do was persuade the Taliban to hand over Bin Laden, or take out Bin Laden. Boots on the ground should always be the last resort. For crying out loud, we did exactly what we had spent the last 20 years slagging off the Russians for doing, with exactly the same results.

[500N]

OK, I'll defer to your better knowledge and experience :ok:

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

I'm not claiming any special experience here; that's why I said "I don't think so"
So my statements are an invitation to debate....but Did we not do exactly what we had just slagged off the Rooskies for doing?

p.s. Cost of Afghanistan war - Direct cost $2.2 trillion, with future borrowing cost $4.4 trillion. Cost to UK £37 billion

What on Earth would have been wrong with
1) Get Usama declared unIslamic by some tame Imam - not hard; how many muslims died in 9/11?
2) Pump in $3 billion in "Development Aid" and don't ask how it's spent. Use a rolling program so we ensure they keep Al Qaeda out. Make them spend some of it on girls' schools so the PC brigade don't wet themselves.
3) Usama gets handed over, or the US get invited to send "technical trainers" to aid in his capture.
4) Offer up $50,000,000 cash and all the camels you can f#ck for information leading to the capture of...etc.

This is how we did it 100 years ago. It largely worked. It is a lot less ethically suspect that what we've done since, and we wouldn't have to live in what is increasingly looking like a Police State as a consequence. And it would have been 1,000 times cheaper with no dead westerners.

[Trim Stab]

However, it was deeply wrong right from 9/11 onwards.

Would agree that we had a more-or-less moral justification until that point. But we were deeply wrong since end of WW2. Everything that has happened since in ME is a result of wrong decisions taken then.

[500N]

No, we did exactly what the Ruskies did.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Trim Stab - I wouldn't disagree. But, we have to consider decisions in their historical context, with the information, beliefs and morals of the time. Arguably the threat of Impeachment of Nixon was the point where politicians realised they couldn't do just anything, and we should only consider developments past that point as being "judge-able" morally. Before that we can only judge on efficacy. Vietnam fails on that score because they tried to run a newscast war from half a world away. But Saddam running Iraq was fine from every standpoint - he hated Usama!

[Tankertrashnav]

In the action at Hillah in Iraq on 24th July 1920, over 180 British and Indian Army troops lost their lives, many having being executed after being taken prisoner. The main British Regiment involved was The Manchester Regiment, who bore the brunt of the casualties. This was one of the biggest losses of life ever suffered by the British Army in a single day outside of a major war.

In an unattributed article on a website called The Soldiers Burden I found the following quote:

Sadly the British Army commanders in the recent invasion of Iraq appeared unfamiliar with the 1920 campaign. If those commanders had disseminated the lessons of that campaign to their subordinates, then perhaps more understanding of the situation would have been apparent, resulting in less British body bags being transported to the rear and in less suffering being inflicted on the local population. Such a study would have been a fitting tribute to the British soldiers and their adversaries who fought and died in the country in 1920.

I make no comment on tactics employed either in 1920 or 2002 onwards, I am not qualified to do so, but modifying the above quote to say that if politicians had learned the folly of getting involved in Iraq (and indeed Afghanistan), then the 680 lives referred to by CGB would have been saved.

[Wander00]

Read "Lawrence in Arabia" and about the Sykes Picot Agreement in 1916 and much of the present trouble in the ME will be explained.

[Cabe LeCutter]

Wanderer,

Just finished it, well worth reading

Cabe

[GreenKnight121]

Would agree that we had a more-or-less moral justification until that point. But we were deeply wrong since end of WW2. Everything that has happened since in ME is a result of wrong decisions taken then.

No - everything that has gone wrong in the Middle East is the direct result of the UK/French meddling in the entire region from 1918 to 1925 - the artificial externally-directed creation of "nations" whose boundaries and composition ignored historic religious/tribal/political divisions.

The establishment of hereditary rulers over those faux "nations" using "noble" families from OTHER middle-east areas in order to suppress local self-rule movements. Syria, TransJordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia...

The establishment of the Palestinian Mandate with the promise of an eventual "Jewish National Homeland".

The list is long, and inescapable - much as you seem to try to pretend the UK & France didn't set up the entire mess.



Yes, after WW2 the US joined the UK and France in screwing with people they fundamentally did NOT understand - but the stage was already set and the fuse already lit.


Read A Peace to End all Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East by David Fromkin (Holt & Co. 1989).

It explains just how badly the Allies handled the excised Ottoman territories.

The title comes from a statement by Archibald Wavell (later Field Marshall Earl Wavell) - who served under Allenby in the Palestine Campaign - he was commenting on the treaties bringing WW1 to an end.
After the "war to end war" they seem to have been pretty succcessful in Paris at making a "Peace to end Peace".

[Heathrow Harry]

ANyone getting into Afghanistan should have read about the First Afghan War - or even the first "Flashman" book - and they'd have known what they were in for